Dr. Moonie:
On the point made by the hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key), I have no idea what is holding matters up, but I will ensure that the logjam is broken as quickly as possible.

The hon. Member for Reigate (Mr. Blunt) should accept that the Army legal services have improved considerably since his day. They provide a high standard of service. The Army prosecuting authority, which has been set up since his time, has further increased the competence with which prosecutions are conducted.

It may seem anomalous to award costs if service officers are conducting both prosecution and defence, but the point is that that is not always the case, and in order to be equitable, whichever side causes an irresponsible increase in costs should be liable for it. That is perfectly proper. The hon. Gentleman can rest assured that his point about funding is accepted.

Clause 31

The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mrs. Sylvia Heal):
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 3, in page 32, line 20, after "operation", insert--

'except in matters relating to a serious crime or police raid;'.

Mr. Key:
I had better start by explaining what I mean by "serious". The matter is defined in the Supreme Court Act 1981, as amended by a practice direction from the High Court. I mean classes 1 and 2 out of the standard four classes. Class 1 offences are misprision of treason and treason felony; murder; genocide; torture, hostage taking and offences under the War Crimes Act 1991; an offence under the Official Secrets Acts; and soliciting, incitement, attempt or conspiracy to commit any of those offences. Class 2 offences are manslaughter; infanticide; child destruction; abortion; rape; sexual intercourse with a girl under 13; incest with a girl under 13; sedition; an offence under section 1 of the Geneva Conventions Act 1957; mutiny; piracy, and soliciting, incitement, attempt or conspiracy to commit any of the above offences. That is what I mean by "serious".

I am a survivor of the Ministry of Defence Police Act 1987. As we progressed through that Bill, Ministers of the day made it clear that the Ministry of Defence police force was, on that occasion, being given proper constabulary powers. It was being given a clarity of jurisdiction, with which we all agreed. The then Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Sir A. Hamilton), repeatedly pointed out that the sort of crimes that would be handled by the Ministry of Defence police would be of a minor nature. They would certainly not be serious crimes of the sort that I have described. Furthermore, they might be

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investigated by the Ministry of Defence police by arrangement with the Home Office constabulary concerned. It would only be at the invitation of those Home Office police forces that the Ministry of Defence police would handle such crimes.

It was never envisaged that the Ministry of Defence police would suffer the mission creep, as the National Union of Journalists and others have called it, that we have seen. That is in no way to denigrate the Ministry of Defence police, whom I do not think have had a fair deal over the past 15 years or more. They are a very distinguished and ancient police force, going back to the time of Samuel Pepys. This House has gradually increased the force's powers but every now and again it gets a bit out of kilter and the House addresses the issue once again. That is why we see these clauses tacked on to the Armed Forces Bill. This is quite a modest Armed Forces Bill compared with the last piece of legislation, which was a veritable Christmas tree of differing and widely disparate issues. Nevertheless, these clauses have been tacked on.

In the Select Committee, we challenged the Ministers, the chief constable and the deputy chief constables about what had happened since that nice, simple time in 1987 when everything had seemed so clear. On question 765 on 6 February, Mr. Comben, the deputy chief constable, was asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall):

"You would agree presumably that, when it was first set up, it was envisaged that the MDP would be for minor offences?"

Mr. Comben, to paraphrase him, said yes. He said later:

"In a microcosm, that is what has happened to the MDP. It has got more experience; it has become more effective; it has more technical equipment and it can now investigate a range of offences that it could not have done in the early days prior to 1987. That has happened in all policing, and thank goodness it has."

That is fine, but once again the Ministry of Defence police have got ahead of themselves. That is why I will be arguing that it may have been inappropriate for these clauses to be tagged on to this Bill.

The outgoing chief constable said in his address to the Defence Police Federation national conference at the end of last year that it was all well and good having this recognition, but that it counted for absolutely nothing if the police force was not recognised by the customer. He said that those officers must be seen to be delivering a top quality service, no matter what that service might be. He referred to a number of CID cases. He reported that the CID of the MDP had investigated 30 rape cases--the previous year the figure had been 16.

We heard a lot of evidence in the course of the special Select Committee, not just about rape but murder. There was genuine concern among the Home Office constabulary forces, and genuine worry on the part of the Police Federation of Home Office constabularies at this mission creep.

There was a stark difference in the evidence of the deputy chief constable of the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland who addressed us and the chief constable of Suffolk who addressed us on behalf of the Association of Chief Police Officers of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. That struck members of the special Select Committee quite forcefully.

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8.15 pm

I am trying to clarify, by these amendments, just how far we think that the Ministry of Defence police should be going. It matters to the clients and the public that they know what a Ministry of Defence policeman is. He is in a police uniform; we have been reassured that he or she has superb training, and there is no doubt that they have to meet the same targets as the Home Office police. However, it is important that as the Ministry of Defence police evolve--for evolve they will--we should be clear about what they are seeking to do.

From the Bill's Second Reading onwards, we have been assured that the Ministry of Defence police will operate outside the wire only in a way that will be approved by the chief constable of the local Home Office constabulary. I say "approved by" because that might happen in two ways. It can happen either by the invitation of the chief constable or because of a standing agreement at a high level--a phrase that has been often used during the Bill's passage--between the Ministry of Defence police chief constable and the chief constable of the local force. We will come back to those protocols later.

It is very important to clarify what is meant. That is why these straightforward amendments would insert the words:

"except in matters relating to a serious crime or police raid".

In that way, everybody knows exactly what is happening. I hope that the Minister will be able to respond positively and reassure us that this is not happening simply by accident but that there is a deliberate policy behind it.

Mr. Keetch:
This is the crux of the Bill. As the hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key) has said, the special Select Committee spent a great deal of time discussing it. I am delighted to see the Chairman and other members of the Select Committee here tonight.

The concern that we have expressed on a number of occasions is that there has been, as the hon. Member for Salisbury said, a degree of mission creep in what the MDP have been doing. We have heard conclusive evidence from journalists, from Tony Geraghty and Gill Linscott, of previous actions that the MDP have already undertaken. We have heard of concern about the MDP's existing powers. Therefore, if we are to accept that there should be an extension of the MDP's jurisdiction, the House should be absolutely sure that the limitations placed upon it are right.

I support what the hon. Member for Salisbury said about the crimes that the MDP will be investigating. In our Committee, the Minister made it clear that he did not believe that the MDP should investigate murder, rape, attempted murder, attempted rape, and so on. He believed that there should be a way in which such offences should automatically be offered to the local county constabulary for it to investigate. I should be interested to hear whether he says that now and how he suggests that that should be done.

I should also be interested to hear the Minister's comments on the report of the Armed Forces Bill Committee. We said:

"We believe that there is a case for giving MDP officers greater powers".

We must remember that these officers are dressed like civilian police. If they are going about their duty and they see a crime being committed, of course they should

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intervene and come to the support of the civil powers. They will also want to be involved in assisting at floods and other such incidents. However, we were right to say in the Committee:

"we would be completely opposed to the MDP actively seeking to increase its involvement in general policing duties which are the proper responsibility of local police forces."

There has been a consistent train of thought, throughout the evidence that was taken, that the MDP are seeking to extend their powers because they want to justify their existence. Indeed, when we were in Cyprus, members of the joint Cyprus military police force voiced their concern that the MDP somehow wanted to extend their powers on to their turf. This is the key point of the Bill.